Despite decades of debates, American conservatism remains ill-defined. Throughout the movement’s entire intellectual history, defenders of “liberty” and “authority” have been locked in a seemingly irrepressible conflict about not only its political direction but also its foundational principles. “Conservatism, after all, is a relative term,” the ex-communist National Review editor Frank Meyer wrote in his work In Defense of Freedom. “The question is: what do you want to conserve?”
In her new book, Fusionism, Reason magazine senior editor Stephanie Slade attempts to offer a solution by looking back to and reviving Meyer’s own answer to the question. Rejecting the notion that the conservative movement was a mere Cold War alliance of convenience between traditionalists and libertarians, she argues that it was inspired by a distinct philosophical position. “Fusionism is a synthesis that combines two rich strains of philosophical thought,” she writes, “the classical liberal political tradition and the Judeo-Christian moral tradition.” The first she identifies with “liberty,” as the criterion principle of her politics, and the second with “virtue,” as the individual pursuit of personal excellence.
Slade is at her best when skewering the pretensions of the so-called “New Right,” especially in the decade since populism came down a golden escalator to dominate the Republican Party. On one extreme, unprincipled demagogues throw out any commitment to the American political tradition in their uninhibited pursuit of power; on the other, the rising ideologues of nationalism, integralism, and even fascism contrive theories to defend the troubling abuse of power. “Conservatism is no longer about enduring principles,” Slade rightly laments, “it’s about whatever one man says it is on any given day.” Her attacks on these trends are well-founded and ought to be heeded by conservatives wary that an unthinking nationalism is replacing thoughtful patriotism as the primary expression of the Right today.
Perhaps in an even larger sense, though, what makes Slade’s case for the restraint of classical liberalism so appealing is the ruin of modern progressivism. Long before the publication of this book, our author was boldly defending religious liberty to her libertarian readership at Reason, documenting the ways that the administrative state and the progressives controlling it were violating Americans’ most basic constitutional rights. Left-wing ideology poses a real danger to the freedoms we ought to cherish. In an era of incessant culture warring and aggressive statism, the logic of liberalism presents a glimmer of hope that we can put all this nonsense behind us.
Read more in Law & Liberty.
