A common narrative posits that the conservative movements marriage of traditionalists and libertarians was a tactical maneuver in the face of big government at home and communism abroad. In her new book, Fusionism, Stephanie Slade argues that this alliance narrative misses the mark; fusionism is a coherent philosophy that understands that liberty and virtue are mutually reliant goods. She joins James Patterson to talk about the terms origins and how the conservative movement fell gradually, then rapidly, away from fusionisms principles.

　　Related Links Fusionism by Stephanie Slade

　　Synthesizing S. Frank Meyer by Daniel J. Flynn

　　Transcript James Patterson (00:06):

　　Welcome to the Law Liberty Podcast. Im your host, James Patterson. Law Liberty is an online magazine featuring serious commentary on law, policy, books, and culture informed by a commitment to a society of free and responsible people living under the rule of law. Law Liberty and this podcast are published by Liberty Fund.

　　Hello and welcome to the Law Liberty Podcast. My name is James Patterson. Im associate professor at the Institute for American Civics at the University of Tennessee. With us today as our guest is Stephanie Slade. She is a senior editor at Reason, and we are discussing her new book, Fusionism: Liberty, Virtue, and the Future of the American Right, which is forthcoming at the University of Notre Dame Press, September 1. Her writing has appeared in America Magazine, The New York Times, US News and World Report, and the Online Library of Liberty.

　　(01:12):

　　And she is also a fellow in liberalism studies at the Acton Institute. Stephanie Slade, welcome to the podcast.

　　Stephanie Slade (01:20):

　　Thank you, James. Happy to be here.

　　James Patterson (01:22):

　　Well, your book on fusionism has at least been anticipated greatly by me. I know many other people are very excited about it. And one of the focal points in some of the work youve been doing leading up to the publication of the book has been Frank Meyer. We had Daniel Flynn on who talked about Frank Meyer, the man. Why dont you talk about Frank Meyer, the architect of fusionism?

　　Stephanie Slade (01:46):

　　Sure. Yeah. So for those who maybe havent heard the Flynn conversation, Frank Meyer was a senior editor at National Review magazine from its founding in 1955. So he was one of the founding editors, senior editors. He was the book section editor as well, and just one of William F. Buckley Jr.s sort of right-hand men, one of the senior core leaders at the magazine of what became the flagship conservative magazine in the twentieth century in America. He worked there for 17 years until his death, and he was very influential during that period, though I think that hes mostly been forgotten by too many people since then. So Im so glad that Dan Flynn has this biography out last year that kind of helps to bring him back into the conversation because he was super, super influential. He was referred to often as “ground control” or “air traffic control” for the conservative movement because of the way he helped to bring people into the conservative movement, mentor many young people, and articulate the ideas that he believed that the conservative movement in America specifically should stand for.

　　(02:45):

　　And his idea, what came to be called fusionism, though that wasnt his term, he actually did not like that word, but what came to be called fusionism was his idea that essentially what it means to be a conservative in America is to believe that liberty and virtue are both necessary for human flourishing, that we need to defend both liberalism, classical liberalism as a political tradition, but also virtue as understood through the Judeo-Christian moral tradition, and that both those traditions came together in a unique way in America, and that thats the thing that conservatives in this country were trying to conserve, which is something kind of different from what you might find in a European context or an old world context. Here, liberalism was part of what it meant to be a conservative. So thats kind of what makes us unique and exceptional.

　　James Patterson (03:30):

　　A really important element to your discussion of him is that for a lot of people, especially maybe listeners to this podcast, a lot of what we take for granted as conservatism is just the fusionism that Meyer was so helpful in producing, but that it was very contingent that it would succeed. There were a lot of alternatives at the very start of all of this. There were a lot of people who disagreed with Meyer. Who were those people and what were their disagreements?

　　Stephanie Slade (03:56):

　　Yeah, okay. So the way I start the story that I tell in the book is that, and the sort of conventional wisdom that a lot of people have or that I had at least coming into this project was that the conservative movement in the post-war years after World War II in America had these two sort of competing poles. You had the libertarian influence represented by somebody like Friedrich Hayek, the Austrian economist, and then you had the traditionalist, religious traditionalist or social conservative influence represented by somebody like Russell Kirk, and that you had these two influences that were competing with each other to see which one was going to be the dominant one or the controlling ethos of the conservative movement in America. And what fusionism does is it says, No, no, we cant be choosing between these two things. We need both of them. We need both traditions.”

　　(04:43):

　　We need classical liberalism. We need to care about individual liberty, rule of law, separation of powers, free markets, all of that stuff that falls under the classically liberal umbrella. But liberalism itself is not enough if we dont have some sort of moral tradition that will help people understand what to do with their freedom once they have it and how to live a good life and how to build a good life and what does a good society look like, what are our obligations to one another? And those questions cant really be answered by liberalism alone. So we need teachings about what does virtue mean? What does a virtuous life look like? And so thats the fusion, thats the fusion, those two traditions coming together.

　　James Patterson (05:21):

　　Theres a great example of that, and you tell this story during a meeting at the Mont Pellerin Society in which Russell Kirk is called on to respond to a speech given by Hayek. Its the Hayek speech about why hes not a conservative. Whats that story like? Its really like the meetings of liberty and virtue that Meyers trying to marry.

　　Stephanie Slade (05:41):

　　And I should say, I didnt finish my thought, which is as I researched my book, what I found was that actually both Hayek and Kirk were extremely fusionist themselves. So although I at least came in thinking that they represented these two poles pulling against each other and with liberty and virtue in an antagonistic relationship, when you actually sit down and read Hayek and you sit down and read Kirk, you realize, wow, Kirk was actually quite libertarian and Hayek was a traditionalist. He was not himself personally very religious, but he believed that religion and morality and the sort of wisdom handed down through generations were necessary and important bulwarks for a free society. So Hayek is very traditionalist in addition to being a libertarian. Kirk is very libertarian in addition to being a traditionalist. So I argue that essentially fusionism was a much more widespread position than just.

　　(06:27):

　　It was not just something that Frank Meyer invented. He was describing what he found on the ground as the sort of native indigenous ethos and spirit of what it means to be American. So there was sometimes tension between these different figures. And so this story that youre alluding to where Russell Kirk comes as a guest, hes not a member of MPS, but hes invited as a guest and Hayek presents what became his famous paper, “Why I Am Not a Conservative.” And then Kirk is invited to respond and he gives a response where hes defending conservatism. Whats interesting though is, again, if you actually take the time to sit down and read the essay, “Why I Am Not a Conservative” by Friedrich Hayek, what you find is that hes not describing American-style conservatism. Hes quite explicitly talking about a sort of old world European throne in altar conservatism and a conservatism associated even in the UK with a disposition thats more like we want to maintain the status quo.

　　(07:21):

　　We dont like change. And that doesnt make a whole lot of sense in the American context because in America, our whole country is founded on going out, people venturing across the sea to found a new country, then venturing west, exploration, adventure, innovation, risk-taking. This is all baked into the American experience. And so a sort of old world understanding of conservatism that is more about preserving the status quo at all costs doesnt make a lot of sense. And of course an old world conservatism thats about throne and altar, like defending the monarchy and the aristocracy. We were founded to overthrow that stuff. And so in a sense, Hayek even writes, he says in his speech, he writes in his essay, he kept saying, Im not a conservative, Im a liberal. But then he says, But actually Americans are … And then he said Im an old Whig.

　　(08:08):

　　Thats how he really describes himself, an old Whig, like the old Whig party in the UK, which is a sort of liberal party. But then he says, In fact, all Americans are Whigs. So even conservative Americans, because Whiggism in Hayeks view is the political tradition upon which America is founded. We took an influence from the Whig tradition in England. Okay. So because of that, again, my argument is that although it sounds like theyre arguing or theyre debating each other at MPS, and they were in a sense having a discussion and a spirited debate, in a way theyre on the same team. Whether they realize it or not, I think in hindsight we can look at what theyre both arguing and what Frank Meyer is subsequently arguing and realize this is all fusionism.

　　James Patterson (08:50):

　　Yeah. And Meyer, hes a former communist and a lot of these emphases either on liberty or virtue are a way of responding to that threat of communism. And its because in a way communism kind of invites this two front attack. One is that its totalitarian and so people want liberty over that, but also that its atheistic and so reduces all questions of virtue to utility for the party. And so people dont know which one to prefer. And Meyers like, You dont have to choose.

　　Stephanie Slade (09:19):

　　I think some people do get this wrong a little bit because youll sometimes hear people say, oh, talk about fusionism as a coalition of the different groups coming together to, for example, vote for Ronald Reagan. And theyll say, Well, the religious traditionalists like Reagan because hes anti-communist and were anti-communist because the Soviet Union is militantly atheist and the libertarians support Reagan because hes a pro-capitalist free market guy and the Soviet Union is anti-capitalist. But this I think is a mistaken reading of fusionism, at least as Im defending it, which is my fusionism and Frank Meyers fusionism and the thing that the word fusionism was coined to describe was a philosophical synthesis between these two things. It wasnt just different groups coming together and voting for the same guy for different reasons. And so thats why the idea that a common enemy in the Soviet Union is what held together the Reagan Coalition.

　　(10:12):

　　This is a thing you often hear, and it may be true about the Reagan coalition because in order to win an election, especially in a landslide the way Reagan did twice, you do have to put together a coalition with some strange bedfellows. So that is obviously a political reality. But fusionism, this philosophical synthesis comes along about 20 years earlier than Reagan being on the national stage. And its not just about getting different people to play nicely and vote for the same guy. Meyers arguing, if you care about liberty, you also need to care about virtue. If you care about virtue, you also need to care about liberty. So the Soviet Union is obviously our enemy and theyre not just our enemy and theyre standing for something that is contrary to everything we believe in, contrary to a free society. Its an unfree society, its a totalitarian society, and you dont have to choose which reason thats for.

　　(11:01):

　　Its for all the reasons.

　　James Patterson (11:03):

　　There are two people who are kind of kept outside of the National Review camp and opposed this fusionist view. One was Ayn Rand, whos all liberty and no virtue, and the other is a person who leaves, and thats L. Brent Bozell Jr. whos all virtue, no liberty. So who are these people and did they have any effect on the way we understand fusionism?

　　Stephanie Slade (11:27):

　　Its a really interesting question. I think thats exactly the right way to think of it is that you can have fusionists say liberty and virtue. We need both. Theyre mutually reinforcing. Sometimes you have radical libertarians. Rand actually didnt use the word libertarian. She called herself an objectivist, but we can broadly and broad brush. She was a little

　　James Patterson (11:43):

　　Precious.

　　Stephanie Slade (11:44):

　　Yeah.

　　James Patterson (11:44):

　　Oh, and now Ive just guaranteed Liberty Funds going to get a lot of emails. Im sorry. Im sorry.

　　Stephanie Slade (11:49):

　　But yeah, so one way you can reject fusionism is you can say, no, no, this virtue stuff is getting in the way of freedom. We need to be prioritizing freedom. Individual liberty is what matters. Liberty is the highest value, and its up to every person to decide for themselves what virtue means for them. And we shouldnt be judging anybodys choice on that matter. That is one way to be an anti-fusionist. Another way to be an anti-fusionist is to think that liberty is getting in the way of people being able to live virtuous lives. And we hear this a lot in our politics today from people on the post-liberal right. Of course, you know all about this, but this idea that weve had too much libertarianism and thats why people cant live good virtuous, moral, upright lives because we made it too easy to get divorced.

　　(12:38):

　　We made it too easy to give church because stores arent forced to close on Sundays. We made it too easy to watch pornography by not having enough censorship, all of this. So we need less liberty in order for people to be virtuous. And so Brent Bozell, I think Ayn Rand is an interesting character because her whole thing about objectivism is that shes not a moral relativist. She thinks there are better and worse ways to live, but her highest value is liberty, I guess I would say. And so the Judeo-Christian understanding of virtue is absent from her worldview. She thinks that no smart people could possibly be a theist or a religious person. And theres a fun anecdote that I included about a time when she and William F. Buckley Jr. were at a party together and she goes up to Buckley and she says, Mr.

　　(13:25):

　　Buckley, you are too smart to believe in God. And he didnt know what to say, but he wanted to show her. This is a Lee Edwards story. Hes the one that told me the story. He wanted to find a way to show her, to demonstrate to her that actually you can be smart and be a believer in God. And so he wrote her a Christmas card in Latin. So anyway, shes a great example of somebody who thinks its all liberty and no virtue, at least as understood in the Judeo-Christian understanding of virtue. And then Brent Bozell is this interesting character. I spent a lot of time on him because hes just such a fascinating person. He was Buckleys brother-in-law. He married Buckleys sister, and he starts out as a Goldwater conservative. In fact, he wrote Conscience of a Conservative. He was the ghost writer for Barry Goldwaters famous political manifesto, which is extremely libertarian.

　　(14:10):

　　So Bozell starts out as a libertarian, basically, a libertarian conservative, but then he converts to Catholicism and he becomes this radical “rad trad,” almost theocratic Catholic. He moves his family to Spain under Francisco Franco because he likes that its a Catholic society and he wants his kids to be raised in that society. He ends up leaving National Review. He also, like Meyer, is one of the early founding editors, senior editors, but he leaves to found his own magazine called Triumph, which is going to be a radically conservative Catholic magazine, which becomes quite anti-American and just quite militantly theocratic, I would say, in terms of he also switches from being a free market guy to saying, We need government that will put up guardrails to help people make better choices in the moral realm and the economic realm. So he becomes much more statist, I might even say authoritarian, because of this conversion he has, but he basically thinks too much freedom is standing in the way of people being able to live virtuous lives.

　　(15:06):

　　And this is a radical departure from the fusionism that at that time I would say was becoming a consensus position on the mainstream sort of National Review conservative movement.

　　James Patterson (15:16):

　　Yeah. I was joking with a mutual friend of ours about how it was very easy to be pro-Franco as an American spending dollars in the 1960s given the state of the Spanish economy. But that aside, one of the things, maybe I knew this, I read Daniel Flynns book, but maybe it didnt land for me, but Bozell takes this very radical turn and not at all bothers the friendship with Meyer.

　　Stephanie Slade (15:44):

　　Thats right. I actually really love that. So they start out as close friends, Meyer and Bozell, originally as allies on the more libertarian side, fusionist side of the conservative movement, Barry Goldwater supporters. After Bozell has this radical conversion, he and Meyer remain close friends. And in fact, Frank Meyer is famous for, if youve heard anybody talk about Meyer the man, hes famous for he lived in Woodstock, New York in this sort of remote mountainside farmhouse in rural Woodstock, New York. And he would stay up all night talking on the phone, reading and working and talking on the phone. He would call people at three oclock in the morning and want to debate ideas with them. And everybody remembers this about him because he was nocturnal. One of his main people that he was constantly on the phone with was Brent Bozell. They were always on the phone, at least when Bozell came back from Spain, because he didnt spend decades there.

　　(16:32):

　　He spent a few years there and then he came back. And so when he comes back, Meyer and Bozell are just constantly, constantly on the phone together. And theres this line that Matthew Continetti recounts in his book of Wilmore Kendall, whos another mid-century conservative leading thinker saying, An emergency call between Brent Bozell and Frank Meyer is a call that interrupts the ongoing normal call between Frank Meyer and Brent Bozell. So theyre like best friends and theyre really close, even though they completely disagree, theyre able to disagree in a friendly manner.

　　James Patterson (17:01):

　　Yeah. And you recount some of the sadder elements of Bozells life. It seems like he was maybe suffering from some difficulties with psychiatric problems that later resolved with him just sort of packing up all the politics and going into a kind of community service life.

　　Stephanie Slade (17:19):

　　Yeah. His final years, he basically gets bored with politics. He realizes politics is not going to save our soul. And so he just kind of decrepit because his years of being ill, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and it really wreaked havoc on his life. I mean, he was injured, he was crippled basically by being hit by a car once when he was in a manic phase and wandered out into traffic. He would often disappear. His family didnt know where he went, and then hed turn up in a hospital or in a jail cell somewhere because he was just out of his mind. So he was really crippled by his illness. When he finally kind of gets it under control, he just turns to a life of service. So hes just serving at soup kitchens. Hes just working with the homeless population on the streets of Washington, DC, where he lives.

　　(18:04):

　　He goes to mass every day, so he retains his deep Catholic faith, but instead of wanting to impose it, or at least his focus is no longer on changing the politics in order to use government to impose it on the country, which kind of was where he had gone for a while, and now hes just trying to serve the people in his community. And I argue in that chapter that this is actually a really fusionist. Its a really beautiful example of a sort of Frank Meyer style fusionism, because the whole idea of fusionism is that we individually and as members of communities and as members of voluntary associations should think of ourselves as being on the front lines of solving problems, social problems, as opposed to reflexively assuming the government will take care of it. Its the governments job to take care of it. Thats a very fusionist approach, and this is actually the way Bozell lives his life.

　　(18:52):

　　Even when he was in his more theocratic integralist phase, hes an institution builder. Hes constantly starting new projects, new apostolates, new organizations. He literally founded Christendom College or what became Christendom College in Virginia. He started it in Spain and ends up coming back and still exists today in Virginia. Hes an institution builder. Thats very fusionist actually to say we should try to solve problems ourselves together in cooperation with other people as opposed to assuming government will solve our problems for us. So its funny that he believed that we needed more government to do things and then that was his politics or thats what he wrote in his articles in Triumph magazine. But in fact, the example that he set with his life was as a person who thinks that the civil society is actually the key to everything.

　　James Patterson (19:40):

　　So if I focus a little too much on Bozell for some of the listeners, hopefully that was the payoff. I really do, I cannot stress how beautiful the ending to that chapter was. It got me a little verklempt. And it also made me think that theres another issue that arises with fusionism thats another one of these difficult problems, which is the issue of race in the civil rights movement. So how much of that you want to go into now is up to you, but its one of the things thats most bothered me about the 1950s National Review. I think Im not alone in that respect.

　　Stephanie Slade (20:11):

　　Yes. Yeah, this is important and I hope that I tackled it well. Its a hard topic because Im defending fusionism despite the fact that some of the leading fusionists, including Frank Meyer, including Buckley, had a track record on civil rights and racial issues during this era that was not what I would consider to be a sterling example of moral virtue. So Buckley, for example, notoriously wrote in, I think it was 1957, an essay called “The South Must Prevail,” in which he basically says whites are the superior race. And so we should basically be willing to deny Black people in the South full political rights, full voting rights, if thats what it takes, because theyre not yet civilized enough to have equal rights. This is a horrific. I mean, even Bozell, whos a statist at this point and has adopted many, many positions that I would consider to be authoritarian and theocratic, goes to his brother-in-law as like, Thats taking it a bit too far, friend.

　　(21:11):

　　This is not required in order to have a free society. So there were definitely prejudices. Meyer, I think, was less prejudiced in that way. I think Sam Tannenhaus biography of Buckley sheds a lot of light on this. Its somewhat controversial. People come down on both sides of that book, but the fact that his family split their time between Connecticut and South Carolina, they had a lot of southern prejudices that he was raised with, Buckley. And so I think that explains where that sentiment that appears in that editorial comes from. And to his credit, over time, he becomes a much more enlightened on racial issues. He is exposed to other ideas and he basically changes his mind on that stuff, but he definitely said some things that are pretty horrible and wrote some things that are pretty horrible during that period. Meyer is basically a New York Jew.

　　(22:03):

　　He doesnt have that southern, that experience of being raised in the South with those prejudices being the water that he swam in that Buckley had. And hes not, I think, racist in that way, but he does really turn on the civil rights movement because he believes that it is militant because he believes that it is socialist, that theyre embracing many of the same figures that are leading figures and pushing for civil rights are also calling for socialism, a socialist revolution in America. And as a former communist, hes not okay with that. And he has a problem with the sort of breakdown of law and order of protests in the streets and riots and violence and that sort of thing. And so it sours him on the civil rights movement in a way that I think is unfortunate. Its unfortunate. And I dont think that it necessarily reflects, again, racism on his part, but it means that we definitely cant look back and say that because he was a fusionist, he was on the right side of every issue.

　　James Patterson (22:59):

　　Yeah. The term youve used a few times there, Judeo-Christian, is actually one of the most curious elements to all of that because King used the same phrase. He called it Hebraic Christian, but the two of them both have the same kind of model in their head of values on which Jews, Catholics, and Protestants can agree and they fall on different sides of the issue of civil rights in a strange way. Do you think the reservations maybe evolved in a direction that was good for fusionism or has it kind of been a thorn in its side?

　　Stephanie Slade (23:36):

　　I do think its a thorn in its side, but I also think that it would be oversimplified to say, Well, they got it wrong and then we now know better. Because one of the things that makes this issue so complicated, actually, even for me, starting from my Fusionist and Libertarian first principles, is that part of the reason that many mid-century conservatives were suspicious of the civil rights movement and sometimes took positions even on Jim Crow, on desegregation, and before that, even on the Civil War and whether Lincoln was a good guy or a bad guy, one of the reason that many conservatives took positions that feel really just, I dont know, they feel wrong to me coming from the twenty-first century perspective as a libertarian, though they got there in many cases, maybe not all cases, but in many cases because they were deeply committed to a sort of Acton-style separation, the importance of separating power because power corrupts.

　　(24:32):

　　And so federalism, the idea that we do not want to empower the federal government to come in and overrule democratic majorities in a state or a locality was really important to them as a principle, not tied to the circumstances of Jim Crow or whatever. But it meant if you start with that principle that we need to separate power, we need to make sure that we dont empower the federal government to be able to do whatever it wants, we need to have states and localities as a counterbalance in a very Madisonian way, that would lead you to say, well then for example, sending in the military to force the University of Alabama to desegregate seems somehow troubling from a purely Federalist perspective, from a pure separation of powers perspective. You dont have to be a racist. I mean from our perspective today is like, how could anybody think that that was an okay position?

　　(25:20):

　　But at the time, there were plenty of people who were not coming at it because they personally wanted to keep Black people out of universities or something, but because they said its dangerous to empower the federal government to overrule states to do this sort of thing. And so its a complicating factor in this conversation that I think we have to acknowledge that its not a sort of clean story even today on this issue.

　　James Patterson (25:49):

　　Yeah, its a bit of a Sophies choice between federalism and racial justice. And segregationist governments are given chance after chance to do the right thing and eventually the troops come in at a time when folks associate troops coming in with authoritarian or totalitarian states, so this looks bad. And thats a tough issue that you tackle, I think, very well in the book. Theres a missing figure, theres actually two missing figures, I might get to the second one later, that is getting a renaissance today, which I can barely believe, and that is Richard Nixon. So why is Richard Nixon not in the book?

　　Stephanie Slade (26:31):

　　Yeah, he could have been. So the importance of Nixon to the story that Im telling is that the sort of mainstream conservative fusionist conservative movement thats emerging with National Review as sort of the epicenter, they see themselves as being conservative insurgents. The Republican Party at the time, its not like we think of it today where the Democratic Party are left progressives and the Republican Party are conservatives. There were liberal Republicans, there were conservative Democrats at this time, and the Republican Party under both Eisenhower and Nixon was, from the perspective of these conservatives, the conservative movement, they were mushy moderates or even liberals. They were not committed, fiercely committed to limited government, free markets, that sort of thing. And also at the time, being a sort of hardcore cold warrior, anti-communist was a really important part of what these guys though it meant to be a conservative.

　　(27:25):

　　And Nixon goes to China and he toys around with price controls. Hes doing all kinds of things that just are not conservative by the understanding that these conservatives have of where theyre trying to move the party. Theyre Goldwater conservatives, and Richard Nixon is a sort of backsliding of the party from the direction that they think it should be going. Now, theyre ultimately successful in influencing Ronald Reagan, who does run as a fusionist, as a conservative as they understand conservatism, but theyre very much like, We are Goldwater and Reagan types, and we are not just Republicans. Were not just going to support Nixon because hes a Republican. I mean, they definitely werent going to support the Democrats, but they at one point withdrew their support from Nixon because they were so disgusted with him not living up to their conservative ideals.

　　James Patterson (28:11):

　　I mean, it may be passing now, but for a long time there was this sort of regnant sloganeering of people that are on the nationalist right, like what has Reagan conservatism conserved or we were never asked, and they show some photograph of some crumbling building in Steubenville. And the chapter on Reagan does a great job of showing what that conservatism did conserve.

　　Stephanie Slade (28:35):

　　Yeah, and it was not a perfect record from a fusionist perspective, certainly not from a libertarian perspective, which is where Im coming from.

　　(28:43):

　　So I think that the crucial thing is to say that Reagan was himself committed to fusionism. He considered himself to be a Frank Meyer guy. So Frank Meyer dies in ’72, so hes already gone by the time Reagan runs for president and is ultimately elected. But in 1981, right after he takes office, Reagan goes to CPAC and gives a speech in which he name drops Frank Meyer as one of his influences, along with Frederick Hayek and Milton Friedman and so many others. But he talks about how Meyer and then implicitly fusionism is what he ran on, is what he believes. He is committed to liberty and virtue. He believes in limited government. He believes in the Judeo-Christian teachings, but hes really suspicious or skeptical of the idea that we can use state power to impose it on society. That said, when he comes into office and hes faced with the sort of messy necessity of compromising with people who dont agree with him in order to get things done, and hes just an imperfect human being himself, he doesnt always govern as a fusionist.

　　(29:44):

　　So a great example of this is that he wants to shrink the state. He believes that the government is too big, the size and scope of government has got grown too big and he wants to find a way to shrink it. He thinks that by cutting taxes, we can help shrink government. However, hes able to push through tax cuts through Congress. Hes not able to push through the spending cuts that are supposed to go with them. And so the result of that is government doesnt shrink, the tax burden gets smaller, but our debt triples over the course of his time in office. So this is an example of him trying to do something from his sort of fusionist impulses, but when it runs up against the exigencies of actual politics, it can be hard to actually get it done. So things like that. Or another thing that some people have pointed to is, oh, Reagan was a protectionist.

　　(30:31):

　　He believed in tariffs. No, he didnt. He was a free trader and he always said that. He agreed reluctantly to support a voluntary trade restriction that would basically limit the number of automobiles from Japan that could be imported to the US. But he said he did this only because he thought if he didnt agree to this small measure that Congress would pass more aggressive tariffs and he was against those. And so he was willing to take a hit, a small hit to prevent a larger hit. Thats the kind of thing you see when youre talking about people actually having to govern in a society where everybody doesnt share necessarily their political commitments.

　　James Patterson (31:05):

　　You got this great line from friend of the podcast, Steve Hayward, that he won the Cold War but not the culture war. And thats him, right? Who said that?

　　Stephanie Slade:

　　I think so. Yeah.

　　James Patterson:

　　Im looking at it, but I see that theres quotation breaks from Chevy Seal too. And so that just tells you how sourced this book is. But its a really great summary of what I think is the liability of fusionism, that because of the art of the possible in politics, Reagan could advance certain elements of fusionism more than others. And so he could win the Cold War, but he couldnt necessarily advance some of the contemporary moral majority agenda or even broader Judeo-Christian consensus agenda on rolling back constitutional right to abortion or what have you. That gets me to the other person whos not in the book. Thats George W. Bush. Hes in there, you mentioned him, but, like, is he a fusionist? What happens with him in fusionism?

　　Stephanie Slade (32:08):

　　Yeah, I would say that George W. Bush, both George Bushs actually, represent the party moving away from fusionism, sort of drifting away from fusionism.

　　James Patterson (32:19):

　　I think thats right. Yeah.

　　Stephanie Slade (32:20):

　　So George W. Bush, in fact, Don Devine, who was a member of the Reagan administration, whos very much a fusionist, he talks about going to CPAC in, I dont know, 2004 maybe at some point during the George W. Bush era, and Bush was there and Bush was giving a speech where he was touting all of his accomplishments and everybody at CPAC was standing and cheering and Don Devine just sat there and he was like, This is liberalism, meaning this is like Democratic politics. So he meant No Child Left Behind, more federal involvement in the education, in the education system, which Reagan style conservatives, old school classically liberal conservatives would always have said education is a state and local issue. Its first and foremost a question for parents and then for school boards and if necessary for states, but the federal government should not be involved in this stuff.

　　(33:11):

　　And so for Bush to take the lead on expanding federal involvement in education was a great example of moving away, moving it in a more status direction from at least in Don Devines estimation. And so there are a number of examples of that later in his presidency, obviously supporting the bailouts of the banks during the financial crisis, something that libertarians cried foul about because youre supposed to let entities fail when they take risks and those risks go bad, youre supposed to let them fail and accept the consequences so that everybody else can learn. And if you dont, if government swoops in and saves them from the consequences of their decisions, it creates whats called moral hazard, which incentivizes more people to make more risky bets that they will then expect to be insulated from the consequences of. So this is not very libertarian, certainly not libertarian.

　　(33:59):

　　So its moving away from that commitment to classical liberalism, limited government, separation of powers, rule of law on a number of fronts, I would say. Now, George W. Bush I think was temperamentally quite similar to Reagan in the sense of he believed in civility and inclusiveness. He was not rabidly anti-immigrant. Reagan got immigration reform through Bush wanted to, he tried. So there are similarities as well, but it definitely represents, I would say an erosion in the commitments to fusionism at a philosophical level. Oh, and the other thing that Bush does is he creates what was called the White Huse Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, which I think its a complex thing because if youre going to have federal grant money available for nonprofits and charities, then theres something problematic from a First Amendment perspective to denying religious institutions the right to apply for those grants.

　　(34:55):

　　However, theres also something kind of icky, I think, about the idea of entangling church and state, of bringing more federal dollars into the philanthropic space, making more of our civil society dependent on tax dollars and therefore subject to the strings, whatever strings that the Obama administration might come in and want to attach to those dollars. And so thats an example where Reagan really wanted to keep these spheres separate. And I would say that the Frank Meyer style fusionism that Im defending is one where we think of these as very separate spheres, the governmental sphere and the non-governmental sphere. And in the non-governmental sphere, you have charities and you have markets and you have churches and you have all of that and you dont want to entangle it with federal dollars and federal regulations, but Bush kind of entangles them more arguably. So theres a lot of ways in which I think he represents a drifting away.

　　James Patterson (35:46):

　　Yeah, theres a long history of churches becoming clients to governments and it is not a happy one. In fact, some of that history, I guess Brent Bozell lived in, but thats a different podcast. So we have at the end of the book a discussion of populism and anti-liberalism in contemporary politics. Im going to pretend like I dont know anything about it and ask you, who are these people and why is it that they seem to have the upper hand over fusionism now?

　　Stephanie Slade (36:25):

　　So basically we tend to think of politics as being along a left right spectrum. And one of the things I always start by saying is you have to recognize that there are liberal as in classically liberal people on the left and illiberal people on the left, and there are now liberal and illiberal people on the right. Brent Bozell was an early illiberal right-wing guy. He wants to use the state to impose his understanding of virtue on everyone, whether they agree or not. And what were now seeing is a rise, and we have seen over the last 10 years or so, is the rise of illiberal, anti-liberal, classically liberal, right-wing politics. I use the term dissident right as a sort of umbrella term to capture a lot of different factions and voices because they dont all believe the same exact thing. You have some who are more theological, I call them theocons.

　　(37:13):

　　Basically theyre focused on like Bozell was, theyre focused on virtue and they think too much liberty is getting in the way so that theyre rejecting fusionism because theyre saying we want the one and we think the other one is instead of being mutually reinforcing, its undermining the thing we care about, which is virtue. And then you have some people who are more like what you might call neo-reactionaries who I say their thing is not that they want liberty or they want virtue. They think all this philosophizing about liberty and virtue is for suckers, but this is all a big joke that we need to recognize that politics is war and all that matters is whos going to acquire the power of the state and use it against their enemies. And the left is going to use it against us if we dont do so first.

　　(37:49):

　　And so thats what were all about is were about winning power so that we can reward our friends, punish our enemies and reorient society to the common good as we understand the common good along the way. But really its much more power focused than anything. So there are different ways to be illiberal or anti-liberal right-wing that all sort of fall under the dissident right banner that I use. But thats I guess the thing that unites them all is that theyre all in one way or another rejecting the fusionist consensus of the twentieth century.

　　James Patterson (38:23):

　　Why is this doing well in intellectual circles? It seems to, first of all, not be very intellectually serious. And second of all, it seems very un-American.

　　Stephanie Slade (38:32):

　　Well, I agree with you about that last part for sure. I think there are two things I tried really hard to understand what is going on here and why are especially young conservatives being so seduced by these ideas because that does seem to be whats happening. There are two things that I came up with. One is I think that after the incredible success of Reagans back-to-back landslide victories and then the fall of the Soviet Union in ’89, ’91, there was this sense among people on the sort of fusionist right that our ideas have been formally vindicated. Who could possibly doubt us now that we were right, that our way of life is the right way of life, that our values and commitments and institutions are the good ones. So we no longer need to spend a lot of time thinking hard about what philosophy we stand for.

　　(39:20):

　　Weve sort of laid the intellectual groundwork, weve seen that its the right one, and now we can focus on just building a political infrastructure to allow us to win elections and implement policy. But when you shift, it turns out when you shift focus away from thinking in terms of ideas and philosophy and into trying to win elections, you can lose sight of what you were trying to win elections for. What was the point of winning the election? What were we trying to do? What are our philosophical commitments? And if you dont, its one thing to say, well, we laid the philosophical groundworks and now we can build on top of it. But I think it turns out if youre not continually tending to that philosophical foundation, it will erode out from underneath the political structure and youll have this political structure that exists just to own the libs and win elections.

　　(40:01):

　　And it can be taken over by a cult of personality because theres no actual philosophical commitments there anymore. And theres whole generations who have come up, weve seen this, we now have whole generations of young conservatives who have never known anything other than conservatism of the Trump-era, a Trump-style conservatism. They think that conservative economics is tariffs, for example, because nobody has ever taught them any differently. So I think the first thing I point to is a failure of transmission, that we didnt transmit the philosophical grounding or tend to the philosophical grounding. And I think thats important and we got to think hard about how do we do better going forward. The other thing that I point to is what were seeing on the far right is a reaction against illiberalism and overreach of the far left. So these young people have come up their entire lives, they feel like every powerful cultural institution, the mainstream media, higher education, Hollywood, the federal bureaucracy, social media companies up until recently, were all in the hands of the far left and they were imposing pretty militantly their far left values on society, not just trying to persuade you, but saying, We will destroy your life.

　　(41:08):

　　We will make it so that you cant make a living if you dare to express an opinion that we consider outside the bounds of our narrow sort of woke identity politics worldview. So if you say marriage is between one man and one woman, well make it so that you can never have another job again. If you say something like affirmative action is actually at odds with the sort of race-blind ideals of the civil rights movement, so we should actually be against affirmative action. Theyll call you a racist. If youre, God forbid, a young straight white man, theyre going to say, Youre going to be denied equal opportunities to get into the college you want to get into, the grad school, the job program, whatever. Youre not going to have the same opportunities because you dont have those sort of identity characteristics that we think should be preferred, and we expect you to sit down and take it and roll over and take it and be happy about it and listen to your moral and be quiet while your moral betters tell you why its good that youre being denied equal opportunities. No wonder a whole generation of young people are resentful of that.

　　(42:06):

　　And no wonder they were looking for somebody who was going to fight, they felt was going to fight for them against this. And I think they were attracted to, they are attracted to the idea of somebody like Trump or a movement like the dissident right that says, Were going to fight no holds barred. Were not going to abide by the rules because we dont think the left is abiding by those rules. And you fusionists, you classical liberals are basically asking us to unilaterally disarm and not use the weapons against the left that the left is going to use against us. And so we reject that and we want to fight back, fight fire with fire kind of thing. I understand why that is an appealing argument. I think its a really dangerous argument. I think its a morally bankrupt argument. I think its going to come back to bite them and probably already is starting to, but I can understand why young people would be attracted to it.

　　James Patterson (42:57):

　　Its probably the single best answer to that question Ive ever heard. And its sort of like the hideous simulacrum of the dilemma between liberty and virtue is fight or flight. So its either fight like Yarvin or Vermeule or flight like the Benedict option in Rod Dreher. If you feel like conservatism, it comes down to the choice between fight or flight, then no wonder its A, irrational because these are not rational responses and B, anti-American because this is supposed to be a country founded on choice and reflection, not a panic. But you have a wonderful conclusion to the book that contemplates the future of fusionism, which is, I wouldnt say its melancholy, but I would say its at least sort of chastened by its losses and as a result, I think has a kind of sobering view for anyone who takes for granted fusionism as the assumptions that most conservatives have.

　　(43:58):

　　So maybe give us a sense of what that conclusion is.

　　Stephanie Slade (44:01):

　　I guess I just think now is a time for going back to first principles and rebuilding from the ground up because we have allowed that foundation to erode and because a whole generation has come of age not being asked to engage with these ideas, just being told were going to give you a permission structure where you can use whatever weapons are at hand against your enemies and feel good about it, be told that thats the only option, the only realistic approach to politics, that theres a lot of just rebuilding from the ground up thats going to have to happen. And so again, when I was trying to understand why are young people being attracted to these ideas, one of the things I came to realize is that many young people feel very adrift in the modern era. And this is not a novel thing that Im saying right now, but they feel like they have not been given a blueprint for how to live a good life.

　　(44:48):

　　And we in the liberty movement, which is what I come from on the sort of fusionist think tank right, have tended to be really good at talking about economic policy and why one economic policy is likely to produce abundance and flourishing, and another one is likely to commiserate the society through top-down central planning and whatnot. And we think that if government gets out of the way and lets people live their lives, they can pursue good lives. But what we havent, I think, fully emphasized the way we should have or realized the way we should have is if young people arent given a sense of what to do with their freedom and they dont feel like they therefore have a path forward for how to build a good life, then they dont care. To them, it seems beside the point to be talking about how to ring another 2 percent of GDP growth out of the economy when theyre like, I dont think that Im ever going to be able to fall in love and start a family and have a good life.

　　(45:48):

　　And I feel like I feel just completely at a loss and adrift in this modern world and nobody is helping me. Nobodys giving me any guidance for how to live a good life. And so theyre going looking for help answering these deep existential questions that they have. And if we arent willing to help them answer those questions, then theyre going to go to the dark corners of the internet and theyre going to find Bronze Age Pervert or whoever, and theyre going to conclude that the reason that they feel so miserable and alone is because women have the right to vote. And this is what happens if you dont. But instead I say, this is why Im hopeful ultimately, not necessarily wildly optimistic, but still hopeful at the end of the day. In our tradition as fusionists where we have the classical liberal political tradition on the one side and we have the Judeo-Christian moral tradition on the other side, we have all the treasures of theology and philosophy, classic philosophy and the literary tradition that we can draw on to help young people answer these questions and understand what a good life looks like without turning to those dark corners of the Internet.

　　(46:50):

　　And so its just a matter of, I think, reopening the treasure chest and rediscovering that treasure as opposed to feeling like we dont have to discover it from. We dont have to invent something new. Thats the beauty of the tradition is it has already been handed down to us and we just sort of forgot about it for a while.

　　James Patterson (47:06):

　　The book is Fusionism: Liberty, Virtue, and the Future of the American Right, the author, Stephanie Slade. Thank you so much for coming onto the Law Liberty Podcast.

　　Stephanie Slade (47:15):

　　Thank you so much, James.

　　James Patterson (47:17):

　　Thanks for listening to this episode of Law Liberty Podcast. Be sure to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and visit us online at www.lawliberty.org.