Why should conservatives look to Fusionism as they debate, often with raised voices, the future of conservatism? Because Fusionism offers a philosophy of prudence not rashness; tradition not the impulse of the moment; a transcendent order not a fatal conceit; reform not revolution. Fusionism guided conservatism for five decades as it rose in political power and influence starting in 1955 and culminating in the presidential landslides of Ronald Reagan and the congressional majorities of Newt Gingrich.  With the right leadership, Fusionism can again bring conservatives of all stripes together.     

The core principle of the original Fusionism, according to its chief author Frank Meyer, was that “the freedom of the person [is] the central and primary end of political society.” The state had only three functions — national defense, the preservation of domestic order, and the administration of justice between citizens. But Fusionism was not an updated version of classical liberalism which had been weakened significantly by utilitarianism and secularism. Fusionism absorbed the best ideas of the main branches of the conservative mainstream — the traditionalist with its emphasis on virtue and order and the libertarian with its emphasis on freedom and reason. It used the threat of collectivism at home and communism abroad to maintain a common front.  (READ MORE: Conservatism After Trump)

Theodore Roosevelt spoke for many, including the traditionalist Russell Kirk, when he said that the true conservative favored gradual change as a compromise between clinging to the status quo and welcoming revolution.  Conservative reform is guided by the Constitution and its principles grounded in human nature. But in the 20th century, constitutional conservatism steadily declined, placed on the defensive by an aggressive liberalism led by Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. Standing athwart history and shouting “Stop!” William F. Buckley and National Review offered a counter philosophy — Fusionism. Frank Meyer argued that both liberty and order based on traditional morality were needed and depended on each other.     

Today, when America is more fractured than at any time since the 1960s and perhaps the Civil War, Fusionism is a time-tested way to cooperation and consensus. Here are its major traits as set forth in Meyer’s collection of essays, “What Is Conservatism?” 

1. Acceptance of an objective moral order.
2. Agreement that the individual person is the focus of political and social thought.
3. Firmly united on limiting the power of the state.
4. Opposed to state control of the economy.
5. Support of “the spirit of the Constitution as originally conceived” with its protection of individual liberty in an ordered society.
6. A devotion to Western civilization (and the family) coupled with the will to defend it.     

The centrality of the individual, limited government, free enterprise, the “original” Constitution — these are not just conservative but American ideas drawn from the founding documents of the Republic, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Federalist. The most controversial principle is the acceptance of a moral order, something that hardcore libertarians object to.   

But the Nobel Laureate and classical liberal Friedrich Hayek noted the importance of mediating institutions in a 1993 Heritage Foundation lecture when he said that the “enormous framework of human cooperation” rests on the institutions of private property, the idea of honesty, and the family. Traditional morality, he said, “is vital to human survival.” The libertarian writer Stephanie Slade agrees, writing that “there is nothing outdated about a belief in traditional morality, adherence to constitutionalism, or opposition to collectivism and utopianism. To the contrary, these principles speak directly to current political conflicts.” 

That morality is central to Fusionism was proven at the 1960 founding of Young Americans for Freedom, which provided the ground troops for the Goldwater and Reagan presidential campaigns. Traditionalists and libertarians debated whether to include the phrase “God-given free will” in the Sharon Statement, a founding document of the modern conservative movement. After spirited discussion and by a narrow vote, the phrase was approved: “That foremost among the transcendent values is the individual’s use of his God-given free will, whence derives his right to be free from the restrictions of arbitrary force.” Libertarians accepted the decision and did not walk out of the meeting — an apt example for today. YAF was careful to acknowledge libertarian thought: “The market economy, allocating resources by the free play of supply and demand, is the single economic system compatible with the requirements of personal freedom and constitutional government.” For the anti-communists, YAF declared: “The forces of international communism are, at present, the greatest single threat to these liberties”; and “the United States should stress victory over, rather than coexistence with, this menace.” Today, Communist China has replaced the Soviet Union as the most serious and binding external threat.  (READ MORE: From Conservatism to Revivalism)

As further proof of Fusionism’s primary place, there is Barry Goldwater’s political manifesto, The Conscience of a Conservative, that sold an amazing 3.5 million copies. Not since Thomas Paine’s Common Sense has any political work had a greater  impact. Goldwater is mistakenly called a libertarian when in fact he was a political fusionist who appealed to what he called “the Forgotten American.” Conservatives young and old read Conscience for its common-sense philosophy.    

The root difference between Conservatives and Liberals, Goldwater wrote, is that Conservatives take account of “the whole man while Liberals look only at the material side of man’s nature.” The Conservative believes that man is in part an economic creature but is also a spiritual creature with spiritual needs and desires. “What is more, these [spiritual] needs and desires reflect the superior side of man’s nature.”  

With this view of the nature of man, Goldwater wrote, it is understandable that the Conservative looks upon politics as “the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for the individual that is consistent with the maintemance of the social order.” “For the American Conservative,” he summed up, “there is no difficulty in identifying the day’s overriding political challenge: it is to preserve and extend freedom.” 

Russell Kirk, the traditionalist conservative, was so taken with Goldwater’s fusionist language that he wrote campaign speeches for the Arizona senator in his 1964 presidential bid. Kirk drew upon the six “canons” of conservative thought listed in the first chapter of “The Conservative Mind”: 

1. Belief in a transcendent order or body of natural law.  
2. Affection for the variety of human existence as opposed to the uniformity of radical systems. 
3. A civilized society requires orders and classes.
4. Freedom and property are closely linked.
5. Custom, convention, and prescription are checks upon man’s lust for power.
6. Prudent change is the means of social preservation.  

The similarities between Meyer’s list and Kirk’s canons are evident — the essential role of private property, the need for prudent change, the necessary checks on man’s desire for power, the uniformity of radicalism (I.e., Communism). There is of course the fundamental difference about the place of the individual, with Meyer putting him at the center of conservatism and Kirk placing him in an adjacent ring. But Kirk and Meyer were in agreement that freedom could not survive on the thin gruel of modern liberalism — it required the solid rib-sticking fare of conservatism. Although libertarians continued to think of themselves as libertarians and traditionalists remained loyal to their traditions, each side, as Clarement McKenna scholar Charles Kesler wrote, compromised. Libertarians reluctantly accepted such aspects of “the national security state” as high defense spending and an internal security apparatus while traditionalists made an uneasy peace with foreign alliances and an encroaching secularism.  (READ MORE: Conservatism Without the Modifiers)

The most prominent practitioner of Fusionism was the 40th president of the United States — Ronald Reagan. At the 1981 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Reagan praised Frank Meyer for fashioning “a vigorous new synthesis of traditional and libertarian thought — a synthesis that is today recognized by many as modern conservatism.” It was Frank Meyer, he said, who reminded us that the robust individualism of the American experience was part of the deeper current of Western learning and culture. It was Meyer, the president said, who pointed out that a respect for law, an appreciation for tradition, and regard for the social consensus that gives stability to our public and private institutions and “must still motivate us as we seek a new economic prosperity based on reducing interference in the marketplace.” Reagan delivered these remarks just 10 days before a demented John Hinckley tried to assassinate him — which may be why this address has not received the attention it should. 

Who, then, will join the New Fusionism?”  

National Conservatism has attracted a number of seasoned conservatives, including the respected Christopher DeMuth, the former head of the American Enterprise Institute, and Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn. In a Statement of Principles DeMuth and his colleagues expressed alarm at how their traditional beliefs and institutions had been “undermined and overthrown.” They  declared their support for a world of independent nations, rejection of globalism, a strong but limited state, the Bible as “the first among the sources of a shared Western civilization,” respect for the rule of law in accordance with the Constitution of 1787, an economy based on private property and free enterprise although not an “absolute” free market, the traditional family as the source of society’s virtues and a rejection of an “unconstrained individualism,” condemnation of state and private institutions that “discriminate and divide us on the basis of race.” 

National Conservatives sound traditional when they say, as DeMuth does, that “we revere the American founding.” They do not believe that, “America is defined [solely] by an idea. It is defined by hundreds of years of tradition and incremental changes and adaptations to new conflicts.” But National Conservatives are more willing than Goldwater/Reagan/Buckley conservatives to use the power of the state, especially to counter the cultural institutions that have been taken over by the “woke left.”

Some National Conservatives have gone so far as to support a national industrial policy that would be anathema to libertarians. National Conservatives oppose the extreme liberalism that places ”the liberty of the individual first, something that trumps all other considerations.”  National Conservatism, DeMuth stressed, is not “a union shop.” “We’re eally trying to draw upon many of the different strands today.” 

As for Patrick Deneen of Notre Dame and Catholic integralism, DeMuth responds, “I do not hear in any of our councils anybody arguing for turning over the American nation to the pope or anything like that.” At the same time, National Conservatives oppose the progressive initiative to destroy religious practice: we must “make the public square more comfortable for people of religious faith.” President Reagan would agree. In his 1981 CPAC address he stressed the need of the nation to commit “to a law higher than our own, to renew our spiritual strength.”  (READ MORE: Who Is the Next Ronald Reagan?)

Conceding that America is “an exceptional nation” DeMuth is more interested in whether it is “an effective nation.” Do we have the means, he asks, to help the Ukraines and Taiwans of the world? He acknowledges that not all National Conservatives are as resolute as he is to help Ukraine. In sum, he believes that the risks America now faces are more threatening “than those America was facing in the late 1960s.” But DeMuth is far from despairing. He believes we are approaching a time of “post-Trump national conservatism” and a new political alignment of Reagan Democrats and Trump Republicans along with an increasing number of Latinos and African Americans. 

A major spokesman of National Conservatism is Yoram Hazony of the Burke Foundation whose latest book, Conservatism: A Rediscovery inspired comments across the conservative spectrum, including from the senior fusionist scholar Donald Devine.  Although Hazony promises to replace Hayekian-Buckley-Meyer-Reagan “fusionist conservatism” with National Conservatism, he never does. Hazony recounts that Ronald Reagan was instrumental in his becoming a moral person and adds that he was not a “dogmatic libertarian.” Hazony so qualifies his criticism of the fusionists in his book that Devine asks whether he really is a “dogmatic nationalist.”        

Proof of the deepening debate among conservatives is the appearance of “Freedom Conservatism: A Statement of Principles.” Accompanied by a photo of Bill Buckley’s Connecticut mansion and a deep bow to “the timeless ideals” of YAF’s Sharon Statement, Freedom Conservatism offers ten principles ranging from the centrality of individual liberty and free enterprise to “a rational immigration policy” and opposition to “racial discrimination in all its forms.” As Law & Liberty editor John Grove has pointed out, immigration is a political question, not a philosophical principle. The phrase, “the shining city on a hill,” is a slogan not a foreign policy strategy. The decision of the authors of Freedom Conservatism to mix politics and principles explains why after 60 years, no one has been able to improve on the Sharon Statement (All hail M. Stanton Evans!) as a fundamental declaration of conservatism. As John Grove says, “Freedom Conservatism” likes to use the language of fundamentals but fails to suggest “how or why we learn from our past … [offers] nothing about the need to rely on prescription.” Nevertheless, Freedom Conservatism deserves a place in the New Fusionism, which will demand compromise by everyone.     

Libertarians will have to accept a larger federal role. Traditionalists will have to concede the central importance of the individual. National Conservatism will have to welcome other conservative strains such as “reform” conservatism which, in the words of Yuval Levin, seeks to “transform American government along conservative lines, into a government that works to sustain and expand the space between the individual and the state; to strengthen the family, civil society, and the market economy.” The “space” between the individual and the state Yuval is referring to is the home of Edmund Burke’s “little platoons” and Alexis de Tocqueville’s “mediating institutions.” In his 1981 CPAC remarks, President Reagan acknowledged the importance of the “social and economic institutions which serve as a buffer and a bridge between the individual and the state.”  

The debate about the future of conservatism has inspired conservatives on all sides speak out. Hoover fellow Peter Berkowitz, author of Constitutional Conservatism, argues that the political priority for all conservatives is to rally around the principles of liberty embodied in the U. S. Constitution with its adherence to political moderation. Cultural conservative Elizabeth Corey argues that many young people are searching for traditional ideas like imperfection and mortality. Libertarian author Charles Murray calls on the upper class (the natural aristocracy of Thomas Jefferson and Russell Kirk) to preach and practice “American exceptionalism” based on such national traits as industriousness, neighborliness, and optimism. National Review editor Ramesh Ponnuru writes that America is built on an idea (the consent of the governed) and has a shared history and a shared culture. 

Modern Age editor Daniel McCarthy promotes what he calls “virtue libertarianism” that harkens back to a classical liberalism fathered by faith. The late Angelo Codevilla argued for a revitalized federalism that allows states to go their way on controversial issues like abortion until “a consensus of the common good takes hold” — something that has not happened in the wake of the reversal of Roe v. Wade. Richard Reinsch, who heads the Simon Center at the Heritage Foundation, has singled out Patrick Deneen of Notre Dame and Adrian Vermeule of Harvard for their sharp criticism of the American founding, which he does not share. Nor does he agree with Vermeule that the administrative state should be given more power.  In a major essay for the Liberty Fund, Stephanie Slade, the managing editor of Reason magazine, offered qualified praise for Frank Meyer and Fusionism, saying that “Meyer’s writings show us that virtue and liberty can both be pre-eminent, so long as each is situated in its proper domain” (the political and the societal). Slade quotes Meyer as saying: “Freedom is not the end of man’s existence. It is a condition, a decisive and integral condition, but still only a condition of that end, which is virtue.”  (READ MORE: The Buckley Legacy: Now It’s Controversial on the Right?)

Room in the New Fusionism should be made for members of the Tea Party who revere the Constitution as much as they do Donald Trump. Proof of their respect can be confirmed by the Heritage Foundation, which distributed over three million copies of the Constitution at the height of the Tea Party movement. Tea Partiers, Natcons, Reformcons, Americons, traditionalists, and libertarians would be invited to form a New Fusionism based on the First Principles of the Founding. They would draw from the political wisdom of Ronald Reagan, who summed up the philosophy of conservatism in his iconic 1964 TV address for Goldwater:  

This is the issue …. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. 

Charles Kesler credits the neoconservatives with helping to prepare the way for Reagan Democrats to cross over into what he calls “a grand conservative coalition.” That is true but omits the role of the New Right, led by the fund-raising guru Richard A. Viguerie, which in the early 70s challenged the supremacy of what they called the Four Bigs — Big Government, Big Business, Big Labor, and Big Media. The political result was the creation of the Moral Majority, which brought an estimated six million evangelicals to the polls in 1980, ensuring Ronald Reagan’s presidential landslide.  However, barely a decade after President Reagan’s triumphant march through history, conservatism had lost its sense of mission. The solution, Kesler said, is to return to the natural rights of the American founders and make them “the heart and soul of a new American conservatism.” Surveying the current $6 trillion federal budget, he offered an appropriate bon mot: “We suffer from too much license and not enough liberty.” By rediscovering America’s principles, he said, conservatives would be able to encounter liberalism afresh and expose how radical it has become.   

In his well-received history of the right, AEI fellow Matthew Continetti writes that the conservative movement “must forge a new consensus based on the idea of individual liberty exercised within a constitutional order that addresses the challenges of our time.” Continetti’s “new consensus” is in fact a New Fusionism that looks to the wisdom of its best minds, such as Bill Buckley, who wrote in 1970: 

 I see it as the continuing challenge of National Review to argue the advantages to every one of the rediscovery of America, the amiability of its people, the flexibility of its institutions, of the great latitude that is still left to the individual, the delights of spontaneity, and, above all, the need for subordinating the private vision over the public vision.

Are we too far down the road to serfdom to mount a meaningful conservative challenge? Is the federal government menacing enough to bring conservatives together? Is Communist China a sufficient threat to persuade conservatives to put aside their differences and unite? Fusionism has led conservatives to victory in the past. Will conservatives turn now to a New Fusionism to preserve and protect the sacred principle of ordered liberty?  (READ MORE: The Kennedy Liberal Democrats Are Long Gone)

As in the past, a New Fusionism must be built on an old political axiom — success comes from addition not subtraction, from multiplication not division. It is an axiom that Bill Buckley honored as the maker of the conservative movement and by Ronald Reagan, who rode to landslide victory twice as he restored Americans’ confidence in themselves, sparked an era of economic prosperity that lasted almost two decades and won the cold war without firing a shot. A New Fusionism is possible if conservatives follow the lead of the master fusionists Bill Buckley and Ronald Reagan, who were resolved to prevent this land from going the way of other great nations that lost their sense of mission and their passion for freedom.